Ultimate Vanilla Frosting with Tips lots of tips

Most of the times, when I share a cake or cupcake recipe I tell you that you that you can add whatever frosting you have on hand, and truth is, most of my recipes go pretty well by themselves or with any frosting recipe you like (I have even told you that sometimes I use boxed frosting!) But I’ve been wanting to sit down and write a complete post for the Ultimate Vanilla Frosting!

I wanted to share with you a kick butt recipe and lots of tips to create a bakery quality treat at home without the fuzz. So finally I decided to do it and I’m pretty proud of the result!

Yeah, this is the Ultimate Vanilla Frosting, trust me, you are not going to need any other vanilla frosting recipe in your life, because the result is soooo delicious! it´s fluffy, sweet but not overpowering and so creamy without weighting down your cake or cupcake. It´s a basic buttercream that doesn’t taste like butter and you are going to want to eat it directly from the bowl with the biggest spoon you can find (at least that’s what I did) and I don’t know if its just me but it tastes VERY similar to the cream in the Oreos and that makes it even better!!

So before the recipe, I want to share a couple of tips that help me a lot with the buttercream

Tips for The Ultimate Vanilla Frosting

Use butter, real butter.

I don’t really know why this happens but every time that I made frosting with anything but butter (think shortening or margarine or butter substitutes) the result is well less than perfect (really less than perfect) and obviously a Ultimate Vanilla Frosting can’t be less than perfect

Add the confectioners sugar s-low-ly.

Most of the times I feel the urge to dump all the ingredients in the mixer and call it a day (what can I tell you? I have zero patience) but with buttercream is better if you add the sugar bit by bit, you give butter enough time to incorporate it and it becomes fluffier Also adding it slowly allows you to really make it to your taste! Really small things like the exact speed of your mixer, the humidity of your kitchen or how powdered is your sugar affect the end result and therefore the amount of confectioners sugar that you need to add to give it enough body.

Frosting should be creamy not hard!

So resist the temptation of adding more confectioners sugar.

Use confectioners sugar,

at first I though this was obvious, but the I remembered that time when I was starting to bake and didn’t knew the difference between table sugar and confectioners sugar so I though why buy another one? And made it with the granulated one. Needless to say the result was horrible and one of the worst things I’ve made until today.

It’s easier if you make it with a mixer.

Actually I prefer to make things with as little tools as possible and I didn’t even bought a mixer till 6 months ago (most of the treats made in the bakery were made by hand!) but with frosting a mixer really helps! You end up with a fluffier frosting with more air in it. With that being said if you don’t have a mixer don’t worry, just keep in mind that the result might be heavier.

Use a good quality vanilla extract.

This is only my opinion and it’s actually based on pretty much nothing but good quality vanilla makes a Ultimate Vanilla Frosting with less butter flavor and a more interesting flavor than just sugar.

so enough tips for today lets get to the real deal the ultimate vanilla frosting

I am so a frosting freak. I love the looks of this and can only imagine how tasty it would be. You have created a delicious model by icing the cupcake. Seriously yummy
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I always make homemade frosting but for years I used shortening instead of butter (it was nasty).
Where do you recommend getting quality vanilla from?
I got some from the grocery store but I am sure it’s not “that great” of a product.

There’s so much that you can do with vanilla frosting and once you master a recipe like this you can simply add another ingredient to change the flavor. Thanks for the recipe! This makes baking a lot more enjoyable!

I super love vanilla and my boys learned to love it as well. My some boy is into baking, he just attended a baking workshop and i guess i could ask him to do some vanilla frosting for us to top on our pancake or cupcake.